The pan-northern socio-political organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum, has mourned the death of the National Publicity Secretary of Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin, describing him as a dutiful man of conviction.
Odumakin died at the COVID-19 Isolation Centre of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital on Saturday due to complications from COVID-19.
Emmanuel Yawe, National Publicity Secretary of ACF, in a statement on Saturday, however, attacked Afenifere, asking the group to ‘turn a new leaf and see issues not from the narrow and limited perspective of one ethnic but the broad perspective of a multi-ethnic federal republic.”
The statement read in full, “The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) today received the sad news of the death of Yinka Odumakin, the spokesman of the Afenifere.
“While he was alive, Yinka held on to his views very strongly. We often disagreed with him on many issues. Our disagreements were, however, on principle and not personal.
“The fundamental difference is that the Afenifere group admits only descendants of Oduduwa as members, while we in the ACF admit even descendants of Oduduwa who are northerners. Our membership’s nature, accomodating hundreds of ethnic groups, has made it very difficult to always agree with a group whose membership is limited to one ethnic group.
“We continue to hope that Afenifere will one day turn a new leaf and see issues not from the narrow and limited perspective of one ethnic group but the broad view of a multi-ethnic federal republic.
“We had hoped that Odumakin would live long enough to work for and see the new day. His death today has robbed us of that opportunity. We, however, pray for his family and his colleagues in Afenifere. We shall certainly miss him.”
Comments are closed.